Bar code symbols are used throughout our economy and by the government to track goods, transactions, and people. Within logistics applications, for example, goods are frequently transported past fixed-mount bar code scanners. The scanners read symbols on the goods and report the scanned symbols to a computer system that records the transaction and initiates appropriate processes. In some applications, it is desirable to move objects past fixed mount scanners at relatively high speeds. Examples include cross docking during package shipping and mail sorting, where packages are often moved on conveyor belts.
Linear charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras have been used in some high speed scanning applications. In many of these applications, the axis of the linear CCD array is placed at a right angle to the motion of the conveyor belt. A high intensity lighting system is set up to brightly illuminate the field of view (FOV) of the CCD array. Data is intermittently or continuously read out of the CCD array as the conveyor moves objects with bar code symbols past its FOV. When data is read continuously, the motion of the conveyor acts to create a vertical scan and the system may be used to capture a two-dimensional (2D) image. In some cases, the conveyor must maintain a constant velocity past the CCD FOV for the system to properly image. One drawback of the linear CCD systems is the high intensity of the illuminators and resultant high power consumption. Maximum conveyor speed is frequently determined by the lighting intensity, the distance the lights and camera must be placed from the surface, and/or the data rate out of the CCD array.
Scanned beam systems in the form of conventional linear (1D) bar code scanners have been in use since the early 1970s as fixed mount devices such as those used in grocery stores. By the early 1980s, scanned beam systems had been adapted to hand held form as several bar code companies introduced helium-neon laser based hand held scanners. Most commonly called laser scanners, such systems scan a laser beam over a surface and measure the light reflected from the beam. The pattern of received light is called a scan reflectance profile and may be processed to decode bar code symbols through which the beam is scanned.
Laser scanners are generally regarded to have several advantages over CCD scanners. Because the laser beam provides its own illumination, a separate, power consuming bank of lights is not required. Collimation of the beam results in a power loss proportional to the inverse square of the distance to the surface rather than proportional to the inverse fourth power as in flood-illuminated cameras. Collimation can also result in greater depth of field (DOF) than CCD systems that must operate with large apertures to maximize light gathering efficiency. Finally, since laser scanners provide intrinsic illumination, alignment of the illuminator FOV with an illuminator FOV is not a problem, allowing for faster installation and greater system mobility.
While laser scanners have been used extensively in low speed fixed-mount environments, they have not heretofore proved successful in high speed imaging applications such as the high speed conveyor applications described above. Due in part to lack of beam position feedback, they have also frequently suffered from scan rates insufficient to capture all lines in a FOV.
With respect to hand held applications, lasers have often proved superior to focal plane sensor-based technologies such as charge-coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor arrays, particularly with respect to aiming, depth-of-field, motion blur immunity, and low peak power consumption. Unfortunately, lasers have not been widely adapted to image capture applications such as reading (2D) matrix symbols, signature capture, etc. Instead, they have been relegated to reading only linear or 2D stacked bar code symbols. This again is due in part to lack of beam position information, and scan rates to slow to capture all pixels in a FOV.